Literary prizes, bookbinding, a few new titles
The Culture Ministry announced the winners of the state literature awards on Monday. Poet Manolis Anagnostakis won the State Prize for Literature for the entire body of his work. Menis Koumandareas and Ziranna Zatelli shared the State Prize for Fiction, for «Twice a Greek» and «By the Unusual Name of Ramanthis Erebus,» respectively. The Short Story Prize went to Dimitris Kalokyris for «The Museum of Numbers» and the Poetry Prize to Marios Markidis for «In Spite of That.» Aristidis Baltas won the Essay-Criticism Award for «Objects Without a Self,» while Costis Papageorgis won the Chronicle Prize for «Kanellos Deliyiannis.» The award for translation of a foreign work of literature into Greek went to Maggie Cohen for her translation of Abraham Gesoa’s «Journey to the End of the Millennium.» Exhibition Lovers of fine books will have the opportunity next week to admire a display of rare bookbinding samples from the Gennadius Library’s collection. The exhibition is being held in conjunction with the Seventh International Forum for the Art of Bookbindng. The official opening is on Thursday, November 21, at the Melina Cultural Center, in the presence of Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos and Athens Mayor Dimitris Avramopoulos. (Contact tel 210.929.0346 for information.) Joint presentation Novelist Paris Tacopoulos and poet Philip Ramp read excerpts from their work at a joint presentation of their most recent titles from the Shoestring Press on Monday at the Athens Foreign Press Association. Apart from sharing a publisher, the writers are linked professionally, as Ramp translated Tacopoulos’s book, «The Apostates.» Introducing «The Apostates,» critic Giorgos Kotifaris marveled at how the author, offspring of an upper middle-class family, had managed to satirize both his own class and the communists, but be rejected by neither. The novel, set in a private school during the Axis occupation of Greece, makes merciless fun of all sides. Poet Lydia Stephanou, whose work Ramp has also translated, introduced Ramp’s «Butte,» saying that his poetry «pushes action and thought to their limits.»
